Three said the police shaved off their beards and hair or forced inmates to shave each other’s heads. The other two were held in other parts of the police department and described similar treatment and gave similar descriptions of some of the same officials involved in the abuse.Īll four said they were denied food and had only limited access to water. Two of the men whose time in unlawful detention overlapped gave closely matching descriptions of the detention facility, the other inmates, the daily routine, the police officials, and the abuse inflicted on presumably gay captives. In at least three cases, police demanded large sums of money for the men’s release. Some of those interviewed said this happened in at least two other cases. One man said the police handed him over to his family, exposing his sexual orientation and indirectly encouraging his family members to kill him. Police seized the detainees’ cell phones for the same purpose.

The four men Human Rights Watch interviewed said that the police interrogated them under torture, demanding that they identify other gay men in their social circles, in some cases showing them photographs. “Impunity for the 2017 anti-gay purge has sanctioned a new wave of torture and humiliation in Chechnya.” “There wasn’t anything remotely resembling an effective investigation into the anti-gay purge of 2017, when Chechen police rounded up and tortured dozens of men they suspected of being gay,” said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. The report suggested that the true scope of detentions was broader. The men’s accounts are consistent with a crime report filed on January 29 with Russia’s chief investigative agency by the Russian LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Network, a prominent LGBT rights group, which stated that in December and January, police in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, rounded up and abused 14 men.

Police officials there kicked them with booted feet, beat them sticks and polypropylene pipes, and tortured three of the four with electric shocks. Human Rights Watch interviewed four men who were detained for between three and 20 days, between December 2018 and February 2019, at the Grozny Internal Affairs Department compound. The Russian authorities should carry out an effective investigation into the anti-gay abuses and hold those responsible to account. The new abuses come against a backdrop of absolute impunity for the vicious large-scale anti-gay purge in spring 2017. (Moscow) – Police in Chechnya have carried out a new round of unlawful detentions, beatings, and humiliation of men they presume to be gay or bisexual, Human Rights Watch said today. © 2019 John Holmes for Human Rights Watch Illustration based on a detainee's testimony about abuse inflicted on him in detention in the Grozny Internal Affairs Department compound, in Chechnya because of his presumed sexual orientation.

Chechnya licence plates